re: Predict the attendance

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I'll guess around 70k

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That would be a miracle. Attendance is likely to be very low for this game. Here are the reasons:

There are three main groups who are responsible for almost all ticket sales to any particular game: 1) Season ticket holders, 2) students and 3) visiting team fans. I believe LSU sells over 70,000 season tickets. Students are allocated about 15,000 tickets. Visiting teams are generally allotted about 7,500 tickets. Together, these groups purchase over 92,000 of the just over 102,000 tickets that can be sold to a given game.

Season ticket holders attendance at a particular game is driven by three primary incentives. First, they buy their tickets well before the season, so the tickets are already paid for, so they have an incentive to either go to the game or pass them off to someone else who will. Second, they are forced to buy tickets to a particular game in order to get tickets to all the other games. Finally, they must renew season tickets each year in order to retain their right to buy those tickets in future years. For this group, none of those incentives apply for this game. To buy a ticket for this game, they must pay additional money that they are not required to pay in order to maintain their tickets for this and future years.

Student tickets are allocated through a points ranking system based on seniority and attendance at designated "points" events in other sports throughout the year. This allocation process occurs before the season and students know from the beginning which games they will receive tickets to. I have no idea how student tickets are being allocated for this game, but regardless of how it works, it can't be done as effectively on three days' notice as it can be in preseason. Students are also incentivized to attend games to which they have tickets or risk losing ranking points. That almost certainly will not apply to this game.

Visiting schools fans' tickets are allocated by the visiting school by whatever process the school uses, but regardless of USC's allocation process, attendance at this game by USC fans is virtually certain to be next to nothing due to the circumstances in South Carolina right now and the short notice for making travel plans.

With these factors dramatically dragging down sales among the three groups responsible for over 92,000 of the 102,000 tickets for a normal game in Tiger Stadium, it would be beyond amazing if ticket sales reached 70% capacity (about 70,000) for this game. 50,000 would be a huge success, and anything close to 40,000 would be a very respectable showing. Given the fact that it's a day game and the opponent is not doing well this season, I will guess attendance will be in the 35,000-45,000 range.